This CAP post was first published here.
Making your wardrobe less wasteful doesn’t mean running out to buy the latest trend in (overpriced) purses made from reprocessed tires. In fact, it isn’t necessarily about buying at all. It’s about taking care of what you have and buying only what you will use.
Knowing what you own before you got shopping will save you the headache of buying clothes you don’t need. Before heading out for a day of shopping, take a few minutes to look through your closet and make some mental notes of what you already have. This will avoid buying that yellow polo shirt that looks eerily similar to the one you bought at last year’s end-of-season sale. You’ll also save money and keep dust off your closet shelves.
And just because something is on sale doesn’t mean you should buy it. Before rushing two armfuls of clothing to the register, consider when you are going to wear what you are buying. You might try going to another store before purchasing anything to decide if you really need it.
Or you could consider shopping at used and vintage apparel stories, which are a great way to prevent clothes from piling up at landfills. You can use Fashion Dig’s store locator to find consignment shops or vintage clothing stores in your area.
Taking care of the clothes you already own is another way to get the most out of your wardrobe. Make your clothes last by following care instruction labels, and only wash clothes that are dirty. Try to find a dry cleaner that doesn’t use perchloroethylene, a chemical that has been found to cause cancer and contaminate the air.
Wash your clothes in cold water when possible. It saves energy and your clothes won’t fade as quickly as in hot water. Air drying your clothes also saves energy and extends the life of your clothing, and the sun’s rays serve as a natural sterilizer if you have the space to hang your clothes outside. If you need to replace your washing machine, try to find a front loader that uses less energy and water than traditional washing machines. You can recycle your old washing machine, and the adventurous can attempt to turn theirs into a bread maker.
Paying special attention to leather garments and accessories will prevent you from having to replace them frequently. Keeping your leather shoes polished and treated to prevent water damage will help keep them in good repair. You can also give your shoes a second life by having them resoled for $20 to $40 instead of throwing them out.
Finally, see if you can find a new home for clothes you will never wear again before sticking them in the back of your closet. You can get money back for your clothes by taking them to a consignment shop or a vintage clothing store, but you can also donate them to a local charity. Chances are there’s still plenty of life left in them, especially if they’ve only been worn a few times.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
I save a lot of money on my clothing by having simplified my style to solid colors only (except neck ties). These clothes go never out of style.
Speaking from experience here: you can even air-dry your clothes in a very small apartment; you don’t need a garden or veranda. I’ve been doing this for thirteen years now.
This post goes to a point that I think is essential part of the discussion: moving toward a climate-friendly economy of sustainability will require some pretty substantial changes in our shop-till-you-drop, throwaway consumerism. Sometimes it seems that our whole economy is based on moving stuff as quickly as possible from mine to landfill, using the maximum possible amount of fossil fuel energy in the process.
One thing I find very educational about our economy is simply to peek into dumpsters wherever I go. It’s pretty startling how often the dumpster’s contents are not junk, but perfectly good stuff, headed for the landfill.
As far as clothing, in my area is a thrift store, and the dumpster behind the store is where they chuck the clothing that’s in excess of what they can sell. Three times a week that dumpster gets filled nearly to the top with clothes that are mostly perfectly good, and three times a week it all gets hauled off to the landfill. I’m guessing this thrift store is not unusual.
It strikes me as tragic how so much human and natural resources and fossil fuel energy went into making and transporting all this stuff, and how little of its potential for use gets realized. The same thing is repeated all through our economy with so many different material and energy flows.
On the one hand it’s a tragedy, but on the other hand it’s a huge opportunity for improvement in how we do things. It’s yet another indication that there is so much waste in the existing system, that we could meet human needs on a vastly smaller energy and materials footprint.
I’m not sure how to even go about making those cultural and economic changes on a society-wide level (I don’t suppose there’s a provision for that in Waxman-Markey!). But I think a good first step is talking about the colossal level of waste, and, as this post does, suggesting alternatives, at least on a personal level.
Warmest July (ocean surface) on record: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090814_julyglobalstats.html
Thanks for this post. These are the types of reminders I try to give my family and friends. Think about what you need and whether that aligns with what you want. If we go back to meeting our true needs again, we can be so much more efficient.
Thank you for a good post again. I start saying that I agree with you but have one question (maybe a bit humorous yet important). After we stop buying all this useless stuff what happens to all the millions of people who make, transport or sell the useless stuff. That is a huge part of the equation especially when we are constantly told to buy our way out of the recession. I wouldn’t have to buy any new clothes for the next 10 years and would still survive with the ones I already have. But my next door shop would suffer. I’m quite sure that even whole western countries would do just fine for many years if the production of clothes and consumer electronics etc. would stop. If I stop buying all the useless stuff, what then do I do with my money? Invest it? Well if I make a good profit what do I then do with even more money that I don’t need for anything? (This is just a hypothetical question that doesn’t really apply to my real life).
We only need a small proportion of our working population to do the necessary things (medical, maintenance, police, agriculture etc.). We are so efficient. The rest of us could just relax take it easy, avoid consumption and have perfectly happy lives. How do we get there and does anyone even want to get there. We might have to redistribute work and start working 4 days/week. I can’t see that happening anytime soon.
So how do we deal with this issue?
One solution is mentioned in the post. We should keep good care of our limited collection of useful stuff and should use a lot of money doing that. And we might consider giving Gross National Happiness (GNH) the priority before GNP. :)
[JR: We need to employ all lot of people making wind, solar PV, CSP, biomass, energy efficiency -- and then installing and maintaining them.]
A lot of wood for furniture comes from tropical rainforests and a lot of that wood is left on the ground as waste, made into charcoal by the local people. So, next time you want some ‘new’ furniture, buy it used from Craigslist and save a tree or two. And if you’re thinking about new flooring or decking, use wood products that have been accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council.
I agree completely with Esko Pettay: if we consume less, unemployment will increase, unless we also work shorter hours.
I think the politically feasible solution to this problem is Dutch-style work-time choice. In both the Netherlands and Germany, workers have the right to request shorter hours, and employers must accommodate the request unless they can prove that it would be a hardship to the business. Largely as a result of this policy, the average Dutch worker works about 25% less per year than the average American worker – and since they produce about as much per hour, that means that they produce, consume, and pollute 25% less than Americans do. (Actually, their pollution is reduced by even more than that: a couple of studies have shown that when people work shorter hours, they do things in less energy intensive ways – eg, cook for themselves rather than buying frozen meals.)
They can afford to work fewer hours because they live in a less consumerist way. Eg, they live in rowhouses rather than in sprawl suburbs, and they bicycle rather than driving.
Work-time choice should be politically feasible, because it is a win-win-win solution. Workers win because no one is forced to work shorter hours; they choose to work shorter hours only if they think it will make their lives more satisfying. Employers win because they do not pay more per hour of labor, and there is some evidence showing that workers are more productive per hour if they have shorter work hours. Of course, the environment wins because the people who work shorter hours consume less and pollute less.
Thank you! It’s sometimes just mind boggling to see the amount of cloths being thrown away. So much so, that even charity shops (here, in the UK, where shopping for second hand cloths in charity shops is relatively common) can’t sell all the cloths they get. I hope that at least some of them they can just give to less fortunate people.
As for the point raised by Esko Pettay, I believe that this is one manifestation of how sick our economy is – the wastefulness and consumerism is just built in. Until we can have a more basic change (so that continuous growth is not necessary for prosperity) one solution is to pay manufacturing workers more per hour, even though they might work less. In many cases this will just about bring them up to decent wages and working conditions. Of course, this might bite into the big companies’ profits but, well, that’s not something I’m about to lose sleep over…
Another solution (or maybe a different aspect of the same one) is buying higher quality stuff, cloths in this case. Cloths that require more skill to make (say a hand-knitted sweater, as a random example), and last longer. Cost more, but you don’t have to buy a new one every year. And the people making them, make less items than in a manufacturing line, but as they are skilled workers, they have higher wages.
Charles and Esko, it’s worth looking into the amount of destitution-level (and slave!) labor that’s employed to grow and harvest the resources required for our consumption and produce the goods. Buying less might put people out of business, but we already supply more than we need and we frequently do it in an unethical way. Remember that when it comes to clothing and many other manufactured goods, we’re not actually the ones supplying most of the labor hours to produce them. I like the idea of having people work fewer hours to produce what’s actually needed, but that won’t make a difference to developing countries that are forced to work 14 or more hours a day to give us cheap goods, often for little or no money (as in the case of Chinese labor jails). While buying less might not be good for the economies that do produce them, it’s obvious that things just aren’t done right at this point. We’re not rocketing those economies into competitive positions, and we’re not helping their environments (ours) by encouraging cheap production methods.
I read Ruth’s post after writing this, and agree there. Economies will shift to suit a culture that supports higher-quality goods and higher standards, just like they shifted to support overconsumption.
DG and others,
Hopefully you could sense that I was trying to be a bit ironic with my comment. I am very much aware of the ethical issues. If I would have the power to decide we would have similar salary level (depending on how challenging the job is), working conditions, environmental requirements, quality requirements etc. across the globe. But we are so far from that.
It will be a huge challenge to get rid of the built in consumerism. We have been brought up to become consumers. Things are changing though; way too slowly but changing anyway.
DG: I think the key point about people working at destitution wages in the developing nations is this:
The world has limited resources. There is enough to give everyone a comfortable standard of living but not enough to support endless economic growth. If people in the developed nations cut back and consume less, it will be possible for the entire world to emerge from poverty to economic comfort. If people in the developed nations keep consuming more and more, the world economy will hit ecological limits before everyone has emerged from poverty.
Consider that most Americans drive every time they leave home. This contributes so much to global warming that it already seems possible that global warming will make life much worse than it already is in the developing nations.
Now, imagine what the world would be like if Americans lived like the Dutch and bicycled as their main form of transportation. Clearly, it would be much more likely that the developing nations could emerge from poverty before the world economy hits ecological limits. Our working and consuming less would make a huge difference for the people in the developing nations.
The key point is that endless growth is not sustainable. During the 20th century, America’s per capita income increased about 8 fold. Project that into the future and we will consume 8 times as much in 2100 as we did in 2000, 64 times as much in 2200, and so on. That clearly is not sustainable: even if we develop carbon-free energy, that huge amount of consumption will hit other resource and environmental constraints.
The alternative is to take at least some of our productivity gains in the form of more free time rather than in the form of more consumption. That would mean slower growth and less consumerism in the US and other developed nations, but I think it would also mean a better way of life.
International comparisons by Ronald Inglehart showing that economic growth increases self-reported happiness until per capita income reaches about one-half its current level in the United States, but economic growth does not increase happiness after income exceeds that level. In the US, we have reached the point where consuming more does not make us any happier – but consuming more is causing huge problems for the world’s environment, and particularly for people in the developing nations.
I am an extremely frugal type of person and see waste as a personal affront. The lights are never on in empty rooms. Incandescent lights are being replaced with compact flourescent bulbs. O am always on the look out for energy saving devices.
That said, I do not understand the point of the article. At whom is it directed? Are any of the readers here consuming unnecessarily? (I admit that I did not turn my last washing machine into a bread-maker – since the cost of replacing the motor was the reason why I needed a new washing machine.)
My fear is that those writing articles like this want to impose their life style choices on me. Currently they are free to select a frugal life style – I do not object. However, if I want to buy a book instead of borrowing it from the library, why shouldn’t I? If I want to buy a book and then not read it, why shouldn’t I? If I want to drive aimlessly in the country on a sunny or even rainy Sunday afternoon, why shouldn’t I? If I want to swim in my own pool in my backyard rather than expose my less than alluring physique to the public gaze at the beach, why shouldn’t I? If I want to throw my clothes in an electric dryer rather than spend the additional time hanging it on the washing line, why shouldn’t I?
The canting preachiness of the article….
[snip]
If you want a minimally consuming lifestyle, go for it. Be my guest. But please, if you must preach, be brief and try some humor.
Just wanted to add something more to the discussion. Here is a link to a good Peak Energy post: http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/search/label/four%20day%20week
Bernie, why are you feeling that this is preachy? To me it seems more like suggestions for someone looking to have a more frugal lifestyle. I’m sure there are people here who haven’t yet thought about how their shopping habits relate to the bigger picture, but – seeing as they are here – are open to new ideas and new ways of cutting their impacts on the environment.
You say that you are leading a frugal life, that’s great. But why does it bother you when someone else talks about their own choices and recommends other people consider similar choices? It’s hardly imposing their choices on you.
As for your questions of ‘if I want…why shouldn’t I?’, I’m not sure what you’re saying there. There *is* a middle ground, where people can be concious of the affects of their actions and aim to reduce their foot print and yet enjoy life. I don’t think the writer of this post meant you should never buy a new article of clothing ever again…
Very nice post. I got rid of my dryer two years ago. I now dry everything on laundry drying racks. Sheets, bath towels and jeans will air dry very nicely. Just give them a hearty shake or two before putting them and the rack and when taking them off. Maybe it is my imagination but I think my towels are much more absorbent now that I am not putting those dryer sheet chemicals on them.